A hyperlink or picture field in SharePoint consists of a name-value pair. The value is always a URL, and the name is the descriptor for that URL. When the field is created, the creator can specify the character of the field, whether it is a hyperlink, or a picture.

If picture is chosen, then all values will be treated as images, and SharePoint renders them as such wherever displayed, in forms, views, etc. The name part of the name-value pair is used as the alt tag for the image when it is written. If hyperlink is chosen, the name portion will be displayed wrapped in a link to the value. These behaviours are particularly suitable to the way that Power BI works with both link and images, as we’ll see shortly. In our example below, we’ll be working with a list that contains 2 instances of this field type, one configured as a picture, and the other as a hyperlink.

The List

Consider the following list that contains two of these fields. The first named “Picture” is not surprisingly configured as a picture type, and the other, “More Info” is configured as a hyperlink:

This view renders a thumbnail of the image for the “Picture” field, and a clickable hyperlink using the link name for the “More Info” field. Behind the scenes however, the data is simply stored as that name-value pair. We will be able to get both field types to render with appropriate behaviours in a Power BI report, but first we need to build the report using Power BI Desktop.

Loading the Data

We first launch Power BI Desktop, select “Get Data” and then choose SharePoint Online list (if connecting to SharePoint Online) or SharePoint List (if using SharePoint Server). We are then prompted for the URL of the SharePoint Site. The dialog is titled SharePoint lists, but the value is the URL of the site, NOT the list itself. Once this is entered we are prompted for credentials if we haven’t connected to this site before. After entering credentials, we can select the list that we want to report on. In our case, it’s named “Listings”. We select it, and then click on the Edit button.

Once the data loads in, one of the first things that you’ll notice is that there are a lot of columns to choose from, and it’s a good idea to remove the columns that you don’t need. We can do this by right clicking on the desired column titles and selecting “Remove”. In this case, we can remove the ContentTypeId column and everything to the right of it, with two important exceptions. We want to keep the “FieldValuesAsText” column, as we’ll be needing that to extract the text values.

Using FieldValuesAsText

In our example, both the “Picture” and “More Info” fields are displayed with a linkable value of “record” for every row. We will explore using these columns below, but to use FieldValuesAsText, it is best to remove them to avoid naming conflicts. As with most complex field type, the “FieldValuesAsText” column can be used to extract the URL for the Hyperlink or Picture field.

We scroll right and select the expander icon for the “FieldValuesAsText” column, then deselect all available fields except the “Picture” and “More Info” columns. In addition, we want to ensure that the “Use original column name as prefix” option is deselected to avoid a lot of messy renaming later.

We then select OK, and two new columns are added in place of FieldValuesAsText named “Picture” and “More Info”. These columns contain the value portion of the name-value pair that make up the Hyperlink or Picture field, but the name portion is dropped.

If all that is needed for the report is the URL portion, then this approach is sufficient, and you can continue working with the data model and report as below. However, to retrieve both the name and the value from the field, an alternate method is required.

Retrieving all Field Values

Instead of removing the “Picture” and “More Info” columns as described in the previous section, retrieving all of the values requires us to use them. In this case, we can safely remove the “FieldValuesAsText” column first, as it won’t be needed. The “Record” values shown for the field value on each row are Power BI’s way of expressing a one-to-one relationship. In this case, each relationship is with a record that has 2 fields, “Description” and “Url”. To use them in a report, they must first be flattened. We do this by selecting the column expander in the upper right of the column title, selecting both fields, and clicking OK.

All Hyperlink or Picture fields will have the same properties, and in our case, this needs to be done for both the “Picture” and “More Info” fields. Because of this, it’s likely a good idea to check the “Use original column names as prefix” box to help keep everything straight. The columns can be renamed at any time if desired. Once This is done for both columns, we will see both the description, and the actual URL value for both of our “Hyperlink or Picture fields, as seen below:

At this point, we are ready to load the data into the data model by selecting the “Close and Apply” button from the ribbon. Once loaded, we are placed into the report design canvas. From here, we need to do a small amount of model editing.

Using Picture or Link Data in the Report

We can add a new table to the design surface, and then add “Picture.Url” to the table. We can quickly see that the default behavior is not optimal – it only displays the URL, not the rendered picture.

This is because the data model only knows the contents of the field to be text. We need to tell the model that this is a picture, and we can do that by selecting the Model tab in the ribbon, selecting the field in the field selection pane,

Once flagged in this manner, the images will automatically render as images whenever they are used in tables, and several other visuals.

The hyperlink field must be categorized in a similar fashion as the picture field, with one difference – instead of Image URL as the data category, we pick Web URL. Once we have done this, we can add it to our table above along with a couple of other fields, including the link description.

The hyperlinks are active and clickable, but they’re not the nicest to look at. They also take up a significant amount of space on the visual. Happily, there is a table feature that we can take advantage of to help us with this. To turn it on, open the table properties pane (the paint roller), open the Values section, and turn on the option for “URL icon” . All of the long links in the table will be reduced down to a compact link icon.

Ideally, I would like to be able to recombine the link description and the link in the visual, the same way that it is rendered in SharePoint. However, this does work well, and it lends us a nice level of interactivity in our reports.

As we can see above, the SharePoint “Hyperlink or Picture” field is not only available to Power BI, but much of its utility can also be brought forward into Power BI reports.